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I guess there's a daredevil inside of most little boys. They like to push the limits of safety and sanity. If you've got a boy or ever raised one, you know that. I'm not sure that part of the boy ever grows up, even when that boy becomes a man. I know that whenever we would hike to the top of a mountain, I would tend to head toward the edge of the cliff. That's where you get the best view, right?
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The names we use to describe people all depend on which side we're on. For example, if there are leftists who are trying to overthrow a pro-western government, we call them guerillas or revolutionaries. If pro-western guerillas are trying to overthrow a leftist government, we call them freedom fighters. If someone comes to our side, they're defectors. If they leave our side, they're deserters. You're probably either coming or going right now.
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Don't ever get behind me in a grocery store checkout line. I told a man that just the other day. You see, this time, once again, the line stopped moving as soon as I got in it. Something usually goes wrong in a line I'm in. It's just a part of my lot in life. I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but when I get in a line, all of a sudden the shift changes, or the toll booth light suddenly goes from green to red, or an argument breaks out in front of me, or people are having trouble paying, or something like that.
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Each year in my Campus Life Club we would have a meeting honoring the football players and the cheerleaders. And we had a crowd-breaker that was always great for laughs. We'd get three cheerleaders up front. We'd give them a bag filled with a complete football uniform, pads and all, minus a couple of items that would have been inappropriate. And then with a player coaching them verbally, the cheerleaders raced to see who could get all their uniform on first. You don't realize how much gear a football player has to put on until you try to figure out where all those pads go; knee pads, shoulder pads, hip pads. I mean, it's a lot to figure out!
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Well, it's time to get out the old winter wardrobe again, and a lot of us don't mind. You see, there's something very special about winter clothes - they're big, they're bulky. In other words, those sweaters cover a multitude of bulges and figure-faults unlike those summer clothes. Remember them? They reveal entirely too much, and I'm not even talking about modesty here. I'm talking honesty about all the figure problems. You know? Winter covers the bulges; summer exposes them. And in that sense, summer is coming for each of us.
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I don't mind sharing my cereal with my family or with house guests. I draw the line at sharing it with the bugs in the house. They seem to like my shredded wheat. In fact, given a chance, these bugs somehow get into the cabinet, get into the box and help themselves. It's not fun to find them sharing your cereal when you open the box in the morning. Eventually they hatch out into moths.
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Most days of my life I have to assess the damage from the day before - on a scale. When you have a history of being sort of "blimpy" when you were young and a slow metabolism as I do, it's very good to weigh yourself every day. One summer we spent the night with our son who was staying in a mobile home. He was unusually enthusiastic about the scale he had. He really wanted us to weigh ourselves on it. See, he's a scale watcher too.
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Over the years I've been placed in positions where I was supposed to motivate people to do something. Obviously that word motivate comes from the same word as motion - get people moving in some area. And I have to say my greatest motivational challenges have not come with large groups or with small groups; well one small group especially - my family. How do you motivate two boys to clean their room? If someone ever wrote an effective book on this, oh I would have bought it. It could have been a best seller. I won't be writing it, so go ahead.
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I'm on the road a lot, and the phone in my room is still a very important tool (especially when I'm in those areas when I don't have cell signal). But years ago, even before cell phones, it was even more frustrating. I was staying in this campus guest room provided by the school where I was ministering. I appreciated the room; I just didn't appreciate the phone. See, I couldn't call out, even collect or with a credit card. The school had programmed the phone so it blocked any outgoing calls, because I guess they didn't want to get stuck with long distance bills.
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For many years Americans were not very quick to catch on to soccer. It's been the world's game; not so much America's game. We did have the World Cup finals here, and for many Americans they began to understand most of what the world already knew. It's the greatest sports obsession in the world. Obsession may seem a little strong, but consider what happened in Thailand. One night during the World Cup games there the streets were empty in this particular Thai city. "Hey, the World Cup is on. Why would I be out on the street?" In fact, even the security guard at the bank left to watch the game. And while the guard and the city lost themselves in a soccer game, you guessed it. Some thief cleaned out the bank. Now, I don't know who won the match, but I know who lost their money.
